


Spare Parts

by mercyme



Series: Spare Parts [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Agent Obi-Wan, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Quartermaster Anakin, the one where obi doesn't find ani until later and it changes everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:42:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercyme/pseuds/mercyme
Summary: The truth is, if Anakin hadn’t shoved his tongue down Obi-Wan Kenobi’s throat over the bar at Mos Eisley’s Cantina, Anakin would never have moved to Coruscant at all, and his life would have been totally different.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Spare Parts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112762
Comments: 25
Kudos: 118





	Spare Parts

The truth is, if Anakin hadn’t shoved his tongue down Obi-Wan Kenobi’s throat over the bar at Mos Eisley’s Cantina, Anakin would never have moved to Coruscant at all, and his life would have been totally different.

Instead, he stumbled home drunker than he’d ever been after a bartending shift and stuffed all the worldly possessions he could into a pack, ignoring his mother’s warnings about rakish men from far off places. It took less than a week after setting foot on Corsucant for Anakin to acknowledge that Shmi Skywalker was right, as she had the tendency to be about rakish men from far off places, but by then Qui-Gon Jinn had put in a word for him at the Galactic State Mechanical Office and Anakin found himself inordinately grateful for his scrappy, criminally underpaid research and development internship.

“LiuChen’s replacement,” Walla, his new supervisor, told the common room with a wave of her hand, “he’ll tide us over for the time being. Name’s Skywalker. Anakin.” she consulted her datapad to ensure she’d gotten it right, then: “Be kind, we’ve hit our yearly max for interns and Palpatine’s tightening the purse strings. Again.”

The staff, hardly sparing a glance from their neatly spaced drafting desks, had no difficulty reading the signals. Anakin was almost insultingly young at 19. Another eager off-worlder fresh to Coruscant City with no real-world experience to make up for it. He belonged to the same transient lot as the last intern, LiuChen, whose ears were so wet he could hardly be trusted to clean the keyboards. Or the intern before, an uncouth if capable product designer, who had been called from the floor to aid The Order with some enquiries, and as far as anyone knew was helping them to this day, as her pack still lay in her cubby awaiting instructions. Several of the staff, but primarily Karin, were in favor of opening it. They said it contained notorious missing treasures: Hawa’s missing glass tupperware, for instance; Luca’s silver inlaid pen; socks, from the washing machines of anyone on the payroll for the last half century. But Anakin’s boss had set her creased face resolutely against it. Only two years had passed since she inherited this role from her predecessor, but they had already taught her that most things were best locked away.

\---

The worst part of working at the Galactic State Mechanical Office, or GSMO, Anakin had realized about two months into the job, was how much he didn’t mind it. The Jedi drove him crazy, of course—how could they not drive him crazy, Quinlan Vos went through grappling hooks as though he was paid to do it and having Mace Windu around made Anakin jumpy, like he was one miss-step away from a lightsaber to his eye socket—but it was kind of nice, the hectic pace of his day to day. Anakin liked the distraction, was good at busy.

Also, Ahsoka dropped by with gossip on Obi-Wan, which did wonders to soften the blow of everyone constantly wrecking his inventions. Ahsoka was definitely Anakin’s favorite; accept no substitutions.

Anyway, it was awful because it was not awful, because Anakin was almost always expecting everything to be awful and found himself enjoying his life instead. He’s not sure what that said about him—some sad combination of “guilty when things don’t go to druk” and “secretly desperately lonely due to any number of traumas”, probably, which was another thing Anakin avoided spending any time considering—but he knew that any therapist worth their salt would have a field day with.

Which is all to say a couple years passed and Anakin stuck around. He was promoted, though the other staff still always made Anakin get the caf order. He made a few friends, rarely blushed when he was in the same room as Obi-Wan Kenobi anymore. And if, on occasion, he woke up in Kenobi’s bed or vice versa, it was just a side benefit of their good working relationship.

\---

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have made happy here,” Obi-Wan teased, his broken, bastardized Huttese sending an unexpected rush of heat down Anakin’s spine.

Anakin could hear the clink of plates sloshing against one other in the sink, could picture Obi-Wan and his mother elbow to elbow doing the washing up after breakfast on the other end of the transceiver. Obi-Wan had dropped by her place after following a lead on Tatooine, probably knew through his space wizard powers that Anakin called his mom every Sunday night like clockwork, just when Shmi would be wrapping up breakfast. Had his mom offered Obi-Wan the transceiver when Anakin rang? Were _all_ Skywalkers susceptible to the Kenobi charm?

“-Met someone nice, settled down. Sipped Tatooine Sunsets while watching the Tatooine suns set. Your mother informs me it would be quite easy to convert your old work shed into some decent lodgings-”

Illegal. It should be illegal for anyone Anakin’s ever fucked to so much as look at Shmi Skywalker.

Anakin continued the conversation in Huttesse out of spite, “I take it you’re having difficulty finding someone to warm your bed this time.”

Blithely unaware, Ahsoka, who’d snuck out of the Jedi Temple, jumped onto the countertop to rummage through the cupboard by his head.

“I’ve enough trouble with one Tatooinian in my life.”

He spared a moment to stare longingly at the row of mismatched shot glasses lined up on the counter across from him—one for Ahsoka and each of his roommates, all of whom were heading to the Uscru Entertainment District that night—then back to Ahsoka, who he hoped hadn’t picked up Huttese recently in a new ploy to ruin his life. Because _what_.

“You don’t have a leg to stand on, Jedi. You’re at my _mother’s house_.”

Ahsoka was balancing in her preternatural way, shoulder-deep in the cupboard. He ducked to avoid the handle of fire-water she triumphantly yanked from its bowels, shot a hand out to catch the box of expired rations that toppled out after it.

“Surely I’ve earned the right to spend time with your mother by this point.”

_What._

Ahsoka hopped from the counter, lissome, and set about doling out shots, quirking an eyebrow his direction in askance.

He shook his head in a dazed “no”, pantomiming flying a podracer. Ahsoka gave him a speaking look, one that indicated she knew him better than he’d ever know himself, and poured him one regardless. Anakin was prepared to forgive her if she covered the cost of the taxi. It was likely coming from Obi-Wan’s coffers and, admittedly, Anakin found vengeance best taken in a shot glass.

“My mother is allowed to hang out with whomever she pleases,” Anakin said diplomatically after a pause, not an acknowledgement but not a denial, either, “Tell her goodnight, would you?”

“Goodnight? Are you going out?”

Anakin stared unseeingly at his bare feet and the cool kitchen floor below them as a strum of energy rocketed up his chest, radiating along his belly and throat.

“Are you jealous?” Anakin asked, nearly stunned into speaking Basic, turning bodily away from Ahsoka when her head darted up at the incredulity in his voice.

“Of course not.”

Heart skipping, he covered the gap between his mouth and the transceiver with his hand to murmur into it like a teenager, “I think I like it.”

“Need I remind you that I’m in your mother’s kitchen?”

“And whose fault is that?”

“I can hardly be blamed for having a soft spot for Skywalkers.”

“I’ve got a race,” Anakin took pity on him with a sigh, narrowly dodging the impulse to roll his eyes at Obi-Wan’s disapproving rumblings, “If you hurry, you can help celebrate my win after.”

“As GSMO’s mech quartermaster, I’m sure you know exactly which parameters will prevent my ship from making it in time to do that.”

“Maybe I just need to teach you how to really fly it,” Anakin couldn’t have chosen a less appropriate time for this, with Obi-Wan in his mom’s kitchen and Anakin sharing his own with Obi-Wan’s padawan. Disturbing, really.

“I’m sure you’ll manage to have a good time without me,” Obi-Wan’s voice came dry and flat across the line.

“Your loss,” Anakin said and hesitated before hanging up, feeling wrong footed and—another regular occurrence—a bit like the game Obi-Wan was playing was unfair, but he couldn’t call him on it lest he risk losing whatever it is they had. 

“How’s ‘Shmi’?” Ahsoka broke into his reverie blandly, nudging a shot glass closer to him.

“Still convinced I’ll find someone nice and settle down on Tatooine,” Anakin half-lied, knocking his shot back to dissolve the weirdness in his throat.

Ahsoka hummed skeptically, “Oh? And how’s that coming?”

“You know I only have eyes for one man.”

“Ugh, _gross_ ,” Ahsoka whacked his shoulder, “I’m glad they’ve got you locked up in GSMO, you can’t lie for druk.”

The wind began to howl outside and Anakin listened to it whump against his domicile’s solitary window, worrying it might finally cave in.

“And even if you weren’t, the force-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Anakin said with a wave of his hand, “the force would give me away. I know. Get the others, I have a race to win.”

\---

The Sunburn was a yearly podracing event on a tight, twisty course roughly eight blocks south of the Outlander Club. It was a lot closer to the size of a generous parking hangar than a race track, which of course resulted in many more accidents than usual, including one that nearly took Anakin’s head off the first year he’d qualified, thus making it one of the best races on Coruscant by his estimation.

“Not this time,” Anakin gritted out as a green podracer manned by a Togruta named Sparkles passed him again on the third round. Sparkles was anything but. They and Anakin had been taking turns passing one another, Anakin passing them going into a turn and Sparkles passing him on the way out.

Anakin didn’t stand on his pedal but it was a near thing, shoulder tight against the inside edge of his cockpit. He felt the whip of the wind plaster his hair against his goggles, and when he cleared the curve, it was that impossible perfect moment, something outside of himself, beyond himself. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t doubt, Anakin left everything on the track. Sparkles wasn’t so lucky, had a shift linkage problem of some sort, and pitted. A moment of deep, sure knowing struck deep in Anakin’s chest. He’d effectively won. The rest of the race, Anakin roared around the track by himself, relearning the track without the distraction of traffic.

Artoo didn’t bother to filter out his snootiness when he pointed out the other racers they were lapping.

Ahsoka insisted on Tatooine Sunsets before Anakin even cleared his cockpit—a worrying indication that she _had_ heard some of his earlier conversation with Obi-Wan—the announcer’s voice still booming zealously over the speakers. Strong hands steered Anakin too-hopefully toward the grime of JoKo’s Alley.

Someone else shoved a trophy into his arms.

“I have work tomorrow,” Anakin protested. The bars on JoKo’s Alley had a way of gripping him tight and not releasing him until sunrise.

Walla would kill him.

Another someone shook a bottle of Darruvian champagne to explode over his head.

“You expect us, your most ardent supporters, to let you just go home after winning?” Ahsoka asked, without even the thinnest patina of anything aside from a desire to get thoroughly wasted before her master returned in her eyes. She shoved her busted up flask into his hand, “Here, I’ll get you started. Bottoms up!”

Kriff it, Anakin was as good as dead in Walla’s eyes anyway. He’d just won The Sunburn for star’s sake, the city’s most infamous pod race. If he was to be executed in front of his peers in the morning, he might as well enjoy his last night.

Anakin remembered his roommates, friends, and spectators—actual spectators at a race of _his_ —enveloping him with their varying opinions on the best bars this side of Dometown, and cheerfully shuffling him into each. Padme dropped by, and Sabé confiscated Ahsoka’s datapad immediately to indemnify all participants from confirming future, randomized padawan gossip. Suddenly Anakin was at the Jedi’s Saber, the best gay club in town (or the newest, at any rate), and the room was filled with so many people that Anakin felt a little overwhelmed by it, by their combined, blinding energy thrumming in the force, in him.

He saw Hawa and Luca from work matching each other drink for drink, Ahsoka dancing wildly yet gracefully in the throng on the dance floor, even Sparkles offering a begrudging smile from where they were leaned against the back wall by the security guard. Still, Anakin couldn’t overcome the vague notion of missing something (“some _one_ ,” his traitorous mind supplied), so he staggered over to Quinlan Vos where he was perched—either stone cold sober or so drunk he couldn’t move—on a bar chair beside an intimidatingly bald woman, and slurred “ _I have something for you,_ ” hauling him into the men’s room. It spoke well of their professional relationship that he let him do this, Anakin thought crazily, when he finally managed to get the door to the bathroom open and shoved Quinlan inside.

“Quinlan.”

“I would prefer Obi-Wan not to kill me,” Quinlan told Anakin seriously.

“Oh, he’s harmless,” Anakin lied, and left Quinlan standing in the entryway to the room looking almost concerned about his safety, which would probably be an expression of undisguised terror on anyone else. “No, I wanted to—here, come over here.”

“I’m good,” Quinlan said.

“Ungrateful,” Anakin accused, but it came out in Huttese, so he had no clue if Quinlan picked up on how ungrateful he was being. But these are the sacrifices you make for love, he guessed, and rifled around in his pocket to pull out a mouse droid.

Anakin stomped over, renewed with determination, “Give me your hand, Quinlan.”

“If I die, the entire planet of Kiffu will go into a period of mourning.”

Ignoring him, Anakin snatched Quinlan’s hand into his own and activated the mouse droid in demonstration.

“Here,” Anakin declared, and Quinlan made a noise that could have easily been a fervent prayer in a language Anakin didn’t speak, “You’re welcome.”

The mouse bot whirred once then expanded to reveal a palm-sized holoprojector.

Quinlan wasn’t starry eyed with gratitude. He didn’t thank Anakin for his tacit favoritism. He just looked sweaty and vaguely less worried.

“Is that it? Just a holoprojector?”

“ _Just_ a holoprojector?” Anakin yelled, closing his eyes—suddenly overcome and feeling a little underappreciated. “Quinlan. It’s secure, unsanctioned—you can communicate discreetly across up to fourteen parsecs with this thing.” 

“And?”

“And it explodes when you say the code word, of course.” Anakin paused, brow furrowing, “Which I will tell you as soon as I remember.”

Quinlan let out a short noise, like his deepest suspicions had just been confirmed, “And you’re giving this to me out of the kindness of your heart?”

“Can you sneak me into the Temple to surprise Obi-Wan tonight?”

At Quinlan’s muttered “force help us all”, Anakin couldn’t help but break out into a shit-eating grin.

“For starters, he’s not back yet, though I’m sure you know considering how tangled up your signatures are right now. Kind of unseemly, by the way. Not a great look for a Jedi and GSMO’s quartermaster, by the way. But sure. Why the kriff not? Involving me in your conjugal visit is a totally sane and reason-”

There came a knock on the door and a woman’s voice called, “We’re leaving.”

For a big guy, Quinlan was surprisingly fast, is what Anakin learned, watching him tear out of the bathroom and down the hall to the bustling barroom after the bald woman from earlier.

“Some other time,” Quinlan called over his shoulder.

A few hours later, Anakin woke up to several missed alarms, no recollection of how he gotten home, a panicked Artoo, and two messages on his datapad from Quinlan Vos reading:

_Codeword was mustard_

_Ask me how I kriffing found out_

\---

Later that morning, Anakin was flying into work, the winter sun glaring down thinly on the roof of his beat up ‘speeder. Two skinny clouds hung unpromisingly between the spired skyscrapers he jangled past, teasing shade to the buildings caught in illusory sun beams below them. So much chrome. Anakin couldn’t invent a worse city for hangovers if he tried.

He made it to work before lunch in spite of the obvious tribulations, driving an hour north of his domicile—Ahsoka likely still passed out inside—to the GSMO offices below the Senate Building, an aluminum lunchbox featuring holovid characters from a children’s movie he never watched rattling in the seat beside him.

Early afternoons at the Senate Building were tranquil, a brief truce in the running fight of each work day. Everyone at GSMO mulishly ignored their datapads and the staff sat in the breakroom over reheated caf, gossiping or reviewing The Order’s most recent, ridiculous product requests. Of the whole Senate Building, therefore, only Padme, who was just returning from her mid-morning meeting with Senator Kryze, actually saw Anakin arrive late, saw the white smoke belching out from his speeders engines as it wheezed its way down to the parking hangar, spluttering noisily to a stop as quenk jazz shuddered through his blown-out speakers in deranged accompaniment.

“Someone had a good night,” Padme remarked, crinkling her nose at the smell of alcohol permeating from Anakin’s pores and—very likely— his eye sockets.

“Engine trouble, actually, thanks for asking,” Anakin lied primly, fumbling out his keycard.

“Are you even hungover?”

“Force didn’t will it,” Anakin intoned sagacious as you please, dropping the act as soon as the keypad beeped its acquiescence. The lock slid back with a metallic “thunk”. He yanked the door open and lunged in with a shouted, “Lunch in thirty, you’re buying!” over his shoulder.

“You’re the worst,” Padme called to the shutting door, its keypad beeping as the lock slid back into place. She rolled her eyes, exhaling harshly with a small smile. Walla was going to absolutely ream him and there was a simple victory in that.

\---

Anakin made it fifteen minutes. They were a glorious fifteen minutes. Despite the hangover, the pressure behind his eyes, and his lunchbox popping open as soon as he’d set it down, the rougamo he’d waited forty-five minutes for dejectedly rolling out in response, Anakin loved his job.

It wasn’t what he was expecting, of course. Nothing about his upbringing on Tatooine indicated that Anakin would ever work somewhere like GSMO, the joint research and development arm of Senate and Jedi Order operations. Working for GSMO was the excitement he’d liked about podracing and the mech development that already dominated so much of his scant free time back home, combined with the delicate strategy of field operations and the rich, heady flavor of state secrets. While Anakin didn’t, strictly speaking, deal much in the latter two, he and Qui-Gon met a couple times a week to train, handily satisfying Anakin’s urge to run head first into walls. It was _great_. 

They were working on a fascinating case now. There had been a rush of black market tibanna into the inner rim. Likely linked to Separatist activity. He was reverse-engineering one of the confiscated tibanna phasers, a gleefully irresponsible endeavor he’d delighted in tearing apart with his coworkers in the breakroom the past week—how could one even responsibly store tibanna phasers, let alone shoot them? Would the tibanna blow up the rifles immediately? The higher ups couldn’t possibly want _them_ to make a tibanna rifle, right?—when his datapad lit up.

 _My office,_ it said, _now. –Walla_

“Kriff,” Anakin spat, and went.

\---

“Bad day to be late,” Walla said, looking ready to throw a fit as soon as Anakin made it in the door, its hydraulic seal clamping shut with no small degree of finality. “Real bad day, Skywalker.”

“Sorry, ‘speeder trouble,” Anakin hedged as he sunk into the chair across from Walla’s desk. It was not the first time Anakin had sat in it and therefore not the first time that he reflected on the sadism of the designer, who must have concluded unease and discomfort were two underutilized qualities in chairs.

“I am sorry,” Anakin tried again, when Walla looked three quarters of a way to an aneurysm, “I’ll stay late tonight to make up for it-”

Walla reached into her drawer, slammed it shut, and threw a holopad down on the desk in front of him. Emblazoned in flickering, champagne-soaked glory, was an image of Anakin winning first place at the Sunburn. Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano was down on one knee, chugging the rest of the champagne bottle to Anakin’s combined horror and delight.

Anakin dropped his head into his hands.

“ _How_?” Anakin made a strangled noise and the lights in the office flickered, “I swear I didn’t think there’d be _photos_ , it’s an illegal pod race. No, I mean. I-give me another chance. Anything. I’ll-stars, okay, I’ll work on the bifurcating cyclical-ignition pulse again. Is that what you want? A lightsaber The Order can use underwater?”

Anakin felt regret creep up through his veins. He opened his mouth to backtrack but Walla cut him off, reading from the article. “’This Sunday’s annual illicit podrace, The Sunburn, proved that Senator Amidala’s taste for bad boys is well placed.’” she glanced up at Anakin, clearing her throat pointedly, “’Her longtime paramour, rumored GSMO quartermaster Anakin Skywalker, took first place both in the race and as the town’s most sought after bad boy heart-throb.’”

Walla left him to stew in that for a moment. Anakin trained his eyes on the hard-packed carpet and wanted to be sick.

“Rumored. GSMO. Quarter. Master. Anakin. Skywalker!”

Anakin flinched, the volume of her voice wreaking havoc on his hangover, and Walla glared at him unapologetically.

“You will not be an effective designer for GSMO,” she snapped, “if you become an infamous public _kriffing_ figure. It goes against the _whole kriffing point_ of GSMO and our clandestine _kriffing_ charade.”

Anakin pushed a hard, anguished breath out of his nose.

“I’m not firing you,” Walla rubbed a hand over her face, “Force help me, I should. But, thankfully, Senator Amidala’s people caught it before it went to print. I’m just begging you, please, for the sake the few years I have left before my glorious retirement—stop with the podracing.”

Anakin’s head shot up, “What? _What_ -”

Walla waved a hand. “Of course Amidala has an alert for her name. But Anakin, you have to realize we can’t keep covering for you. Don’t look at me like that, of course we’ve always known. These illegal races have always jeopardized us in some way, especially you,” Walla rocked heavily back into her chair, her fingers coming up to press firmly against the bridge of her nose, “Which brings me to my next point. The Chancellor’s office sent down orders. From here on out, you’ll be providing more ground support to The Order and— _I don’t want to hear it_ —you’ve been assigned to a Jedi.”

Anakin sat dumbfounded, last night’s alcohol rising from wherever it had been resting to throb at his temples, “You’re putting me on babysitting duty?”

“Now is not the time, Skywalker,” Walla said, leaning forward seriously, “Do you have any clue what this war has done to us? How stretched thin we are? Do you think any of this is easy? What it means for me that I have to send my quartermaster in as ground support for the kriffing Jedi? The sleemos in _Senate_?”

Anakin put his head down on Walla’s desk and groaned his frustration, relieved and smiling slightly in spite of himself. Walla reverting to anti-Jedi, anti-Senate rhetoric was a good sign. They’d be okay.

“Walla, this is psychological torment. There is a power dynamic at play here. You’re going to get hauled into HR and I don’t have room at my place to take you in when you’re fired.”

“Would you rather just the firing part, then?” Walla asked blandly.

Anakin groaned, forcibly reminded of his love for the job and for Walla, who had begrudgingly accepted being cast as one of the few people Anakin actually cared about, and said wonderingly, “I can’t believe they think I’m still dating Padme.”

Walla pinched the bridge of her nose again, having apparently hit her quota of emotions of the day, and reached once more into her desk, this time bringing out a new set of credentials that would give him access to The Temple and the Senate Building offices. “Look,” she said as she handed them over, “aside from your rather transparent soft spots, you are one of the best designers we have. Nothing against the rest of them, but we’ve never had anyone quite like you.”

Anakin flushed at the unexpected compliment. “I—thank you,” he said, quietly preening as he toyed with the edge of his sleeve.

Walla fixed him with a glare. “Or at least the most irritating, at any rate.” She jabbed a thick finger at Anakin, “Don’t give them any more ground than they’ve already taken, okay? And don’t let those Jedi-especially Obi-Wan _kriffing_ Kenobi-walk all over you, okay? You’re worth your salt.”

“Are you sure you don’t want someone else?” Anakin asked before he could stop himself, vomiting the words out in a hurry, “Like maybe Che?”

She must have read something in the look on Anakin’s face, “I didn’t pick your name out of a hat, if that’s what you’re asking. And Vokaa’s been the head of the integrated biometrics division for months now. That’s all, dismissed.”

Anakin nodded and swallowed. The conversation heavy in his mind, he stood and turned to go. He was almost to the door when Walla cleared her throat, and Anakin turned, apprehensive.

“I hate you less than the others,” Walla said, flipping through her file cabinet and not looking up. “Don’t pull anything else this week that makes me reconsider saying that. Quit with the podracing.”

"You're a nice boss, Walla," Anakin told her, and Walla threw a holopad at his head, yelling:

"Sithspit, Anakin, don't say druk like that — what if someone kriffing hears you? Kriff off."

The expression on Walla’s face sent a shiver down his spine. Anakin laughed about it all the way back to his desk. When he got there, he was welcomed by another message from Walla lighting up his datapad:

_I’m assigning u 2 Vos. –Walla_

Anakin would report her to HR, eventually.

\---

Deciding that Walla wouldn’t fire him before her cruel and unusual assignment came to fruition, Anakin cut out early and caught Padme in her offices for a late lunch. Padme refused to let him into the Senate cafeteria after last month, when he’d upended his soup on her in an effort to avoid Jedi Master Yoda’s gimer stick. Not his fault. The gimer stick had a way of finding Anakin’s shins, even when Yoda was engaged in intense conversation facing the other direction. Anakin couldn’t be sure but had a hypothesis that this meant Grand Master Yoda really liked him. Which maybe said more about Anakin than Yoda.

Padme’s offices had seen many regrettable, terrible things over the years of their friendship, including the increasingly stupid chicken he and Padme had played when he’d started at GSMO, where he’d first pretended not to be pathetically heartbroken over Obi-Wan, and then they’d pretended it was fine for them to sneak around to ignore aforementioned feelings, and then pretended they were both ready to take on Padme’s pregnancy scare. It had been a summer fraught with poor decision making and even worse headlines.

“You know it won’t be all bad,” Padme says, pushing around the last of the fries on her plate. “You and Vos get along. Plus, you won’t be bored.”

“I’m not babysitting _Quinlan Vos_ ,” Anakin said and ignored Padme's knowing smile, one that indicated the Military Creation Act still weighed heavily on her mind, as she rose to leave.

Padme’s offices were a monument to the level of chaos that orbited her on a daily basis: stacks of files, binders, an ornate Endor-wood desk that was probably a royal heirloom before it became a pitiful, caf-stained workhorse, six holopads (only one of which was ever working despite Anakin’s best efforts) and heaps of folders her sleep deprived, ever-cycling congressional aids turned into her after hearings so she could eviscerate her opponents as calamitously as possible on the floor. There was also a line of green ferns from Naboo on her windowsill, where all the late-afternoon light poured in and bleached out the rich purples and golds of her office.

“I’ll be sure to earmark funds in Senator Aang’s next bill to stock the ships with alcohol,” she assured him wryly, and he naturally stood and fell into step beside her as she made her way from her office toward the hangar. Padme was leaving for Mandalore that evening, which Anakin was certain had absolutely to do with her morning meeting with the Military Oversight Committee, of which one Senator Kryze was a member.

"I'm not susceptible to bribes," Anakin lied while side-stepping the Chancellor’s Chief of Staff, who was whisper-shouting into his comlink, “It was an accident, okay? Much like when that ewok got your mom pregnant, resulting in you," and a lesser representative, who was telling one of their interns, “You can't even call this druk a war. Why? _Why_? Because wars actually kriffing _end._ "

So concerned, the denizens of Coruscant were, for the preservation of their democracy. Defense legislation, backroom deals, increasing executive authority, all to preserve it. Seemingly everyone fit in somewhere in the Senate, with senators representing worlds, groups of worlds, and some representing government agencies-none of it making sense, no matter how many times Padme explained it. Slow moving democracy their chosen hammer by which they reshaped all the deep-seated, socioeconomic dents under their purview.

This was the political force that lead the galaxy. The political force that would sooner fund a new monument than save enslaved peoples. Anakin knew, for he’d been one of them.

Patting his hand, Padme said, “Okay, sure, but remember: Tatooine Sunsets.”

The hypocrisy was not lost on Anakin, that he worked for their research and development branch.

“Kriff off about the Tatooine Sunsets,” Anakin said, harassed, “why does everyone keep talking to me about Tatooine Sunsets?"

“You could quit, you know. Pursue podracing full time. Get arrested. Of course, then Obi-Wan Kenobi would have to break you out and probably get kicked out of The Order.”

“And leave you here with all this mess?”

“Oh, I’m plenty good at fixing messes. Not that any of it ever makes the headlines...those are more your thing, anyway, aren’t they?” Padme said so diplomatically that he knew she’d been waiting for the opportunity to say it all day.

Anakin decided he kriffing hated everyone.

\---

When Anakin swung his office door open after lunch, it was to find Obi-Wan perched on the corner of his desk, eyeing the tibanna prototype. His kit sat beside him among Anakin’s calculations, droopy rougamo, and a half-drank cup of caf, only bearing minimal scratches and missing nothing too obvious. It cost Anakin every ounce of his self-discipline to keep his features even.

The surprise, however, still managed to seep into his tone, “General Kenobi?”

“Quartermaster.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes were a blend of mirth and his typical equanimity, filled with warmth as if he, too, felt that Anakin’s life had been incomplete without him roaming the halls of GSMO.

Anakin tried not to read too much into it.

Then Obi-Wan crossed the room and shoved Anakin against the door, the lock engaging of its own volition. Anakin twisted a hand in Obi-Wan’s tabards and bit at his lower lip, pushed harder than he should because this was _Obi-Wan_ and Obi-Wan could take it. True to form, Obi-Wan growled low in his throat and grabbed Anakin’s hair and yanked, just a little, just enough to drag Anakin down for a better angle, and Anakin felt his whole body come to complete, hair-raising attention as he was pushed gently away.

"Well," Obi-Wan said breathlessly. "At least that’s out of the way."

Anakin blinked at him, stunned. Obi-Wan’s hand, he realized in a slow, calm wave, was resting on his beck, and as the thumb moved, grazing across his pulse point, Anakin heard Obi-Wan’s breath hitch, heard his own breathing answer in kind. Oh, god, and he was hard, both of them were, and Obi-Wan was here, not with Anakin’s kriffing _mom_ , not some space detritus floating through the stars, safe and real and there.

“You’re projecting rather intensely, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, distractedly tugging Anakin in by the collar of his shirt until their lips almost touched, a slow, deliberate thing.

“No, you don’t get to do that,” irritation sparked in Anakin’s chest and he pushed Obi-Wan away. He went willingly, which sparked something in Anakin; this battle-hardened General’s quiet acquiescence when Anakin moved him. “You don’t get to act like my presence in the force or whatever is making you want to fuck me-”

Anakin paused at Obi-Wan’s considering hum.

“Did I say that?”

Anakin’s gaze flicked from Obi-Wan’s quirked, no-nonsense eyebrow to his slightly parted lips and back again before giving in, drawing him in for a slower kiss. The pleased rumble from Obi-Wan’s throat was comforting. Comforting in a way that Anakin had come to associate with Obi-Wan, especially Obi-Wan back from the front. Anakin savored it for a minute.

“I mean, you kinda did,” Anakin gasped, breaking away even as he wrapped his legs around Obi-Wan’s hips. He was abstractly thankful for the years of training that strengthened his body enough to leverage himself between the door and the hard line of Obi-Wan’s body.

Obi-Wan’s broad hands came to hold him beneath his thighs. He sighed, wearing his long-suffering expression. The one that said, “ _Just ride it out, Obi-Wan_.”

“No, you did,” Anakin insisted, grinding against him, “Was waiting in my office for me too much? You embarrassed?”

“Anakin. I came straight here after I returned. I visited your mother while recapturing a separatist planet in the outer rim. I genuinely like you,” he said, punctuating each statement with a kiss.

But in one of those moments that Anakin couldn’t possibly have anticipated and tried to prevent, he suffered a spontaneous, unstoppable burst of honesty, and said:

“You sure kriffing didn’t when I moved across the galaxy for you.”

\---

In the immediate, druky aftermath of Anakin arriving on Coruscant and Obi-Wan refusing to acknowledge his existence, Anakin had spent a lot of time at the building's gym with Qui-Gon Jinn taking escrima sticks to the ribs and trying to wrestle down his rage into a reasonable level of background heartbreak. It had been bad enough to rock up off the terminal feeling excellently used and wonderfully sore to realize Obi-Wan wasn’t just uninterested, he was distinctly absent, and Anakin thought, "Okay. It didn't mean anything. I was a random body to him, move on," except it had, Obi-Wan wasn't just a random to him, and he couldn’t. Anakin had brought him into the back office of the cantina and Obi-Wan had fiddled with the surveillance cameras, flicking and flicking like a curious child until he’d turned and proclaimed the two of them safe, softening something in Anakin’s chest. It had been a new feeling, having someone to look after him, even it was a stranger.

So yeah, Anakin had preoccupied himself with building a life — too angry to turn tail and run — hoping simultaneously that Obi-Wan would continue avoiding him, and hoping Obi-Wan wouldn’t, and would come over any minute now to kriffing explain himself for “one and done”-ing him. For making him think there was reason to leave the Outer Rim in the first place.

It didn't happen that first day and it didn't happen the day after. It didn't happen for months after, almost a year, until Walla had promoted Anakin into a perm position and dragged him into a strategy meeting to talk about his new camtono design and Obi-Wan, composed and charming, had nearly fell out of his chair at Anakin’s entrance, avoided spilling caf all over the newest intern only through the use of the force, and gone ashen with recognition.

"How long have you been in Coruscant?" Obi-Wan asked later, cornering Anakin by his desk, which was an actual, bonafide drafting desk by then.

"A year or so," Anakin said, breathing deeply because by this point he knew picking up on others' emotions was a force thing, and Jedi were especially good at it. "I've always been interested in mech design and Qui-Gon Jinn remembered me from Tatooine so he got me this job and — "

Except Obi-Wan had seen right through him, had put a hand on Anakin’s wrist, touch almost insultingly gentle. "How do I make it up to you? Dinner? A drink?"

"Leave me alone," Anakin said, because at that moment, that had been the only thing in the world he wanted. He'd been forgotten as an injury and overlooked for ages as further insult, and he didn't want Obi-Wan to make it up to him; he wanted to stew in his self-pity and indulge in some much-deserved loathing and never, never catch feelings for anybody again.

"Oh, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, sounding hollowed-out.

At which point Padme had proven her worth as a friend and laced her fingers through his, laughingly chastising him for being late to lunch and leveling such an unimpressed look at Obi-Wan that all attempts at having feelings or making amends screeched to a halt.

It had taken another five months for Obi-Wan to wear him down (a quality Anakin had grown quite familiar with in time) to the point where Anakin could bear to be in the same room as him, let alone sustain eye contact. And, even then, it wasn't until another month later, when Padawan Obi-Wan graduated into Jedi Knight Obi-Wan, that the tension finally started to seep out. It had occurred somewhere between Anakin and Qui-Gon huddled together over Anakin's desk, a plate of fries and two massive mugs of tea between them, and finding out that Obi-Wan had made it through his first official mission.

"Not bad," Anakin said into the comlink, when it was clear that Obi-Wan would make it back not only in one piece but with a new Holtzman field generator that might revolutionize their suspensor lifts. "Good work, Knight Kenobi."

Obi Wan had swung by his office after, all poorly-concealed adrenaline, and Anakin had been suitably charmed. The next morning, when he woke up squeezed against Obi-Wan in his twin-size bed, he thought that it would be fine for real now, that they could work together after all. Anakin couldn’t bring feelings into it but he could have this. 

So, it's not a surprise that the hugeness of the error he'd just made won't leave him.

“Is that really how you feel?” Obi-Wan asked, voice raw, wearing his heart break so openly on his face that Anakin felt his own heart crack open. He gently lowered Anakin to the ground from where he'd been pressed against the door, smoothing a hand over his robes, resting it on his heart.

Then anger flowed out. After the past six months of the tentative ice they’d been skating, Obi-Wan didn’t get to play dumb, not when Anakin had already whittled himself down to crumbs.

“I can’t do this, General. I’ve got-” he shoved away from the door, from the solid, inviting heat of Obi-Wan’s body, and grabbed blindly for his datapad,“-I’ve got work to do. Walla assigned me a mission with Vos. You need to leave.”

\---

Anakin’s been in love twice in his life, and the first time with a circuit board. He never got over that one, never even tried; it was still there, humming under his fingers while he worked, the heady stream of how things fit together. Anakin had never been able to fathom reality without picking it apart and building it a different way, forcing his way mulishly forward as though he could outlast the stars if he just burned bright enough.

The second time, well. It was a different type of love. One that Anakin feared had already swallowed him whole, would rip him apart if he wasn’t careful.

\---

He had never seen real combat before, which was generally agreed upon as Anakin’s biggest personal failing by the agents he worked with as GSMO’s quartermaster.

He found, once it happened, a renewed desire to fist fight every last one of them.

“Kriff,” Vos’s voice came in panting gasps over the comlink, and then again for good measure: “kriff, kriff, kriff.”

Vos cursed a lot, not necessarily well, but always in a way that, once heard, assured anyone listening that he’d had plenty of practice. It was only one of the many ways Vos lulled the naive into believing he was a lot of fun when, really, he was a chaos vector. A purveyor of adrenaline.

Having lived through one, Anakin concluded that his stories were much more fun heard at the bar.

But, being a naïve, adventure-seeking, rampant emotional issues _moron_ , Anakin run away from Obi-Wan and agreed to join Vos on the mission, a decision that ended for most with broken bones and for a select few in a thrill-seeking rebirth, the latter of whom terrified Anakin. Not in the least because Anakin had never been in a real saber fight. And could have gone his entire life without knowing what it felt like to lose one, in retrospect. 

“You are the _worst_ ,” he heaved into his comlink, instead of any of that, when he caught his breath, “How did Dooku find us?”

“Oh, good. I thought we’d lost you,” Vos said, tone brightening.

“You _did_ almost lose me. Because Count Dooku was there. _A Sith lord_.”

“Does this mean you won’t come out with me again?” Vos asked with unmasked adrenaline, indicating that this was not at all abnormal for him. His agile footsteps pounded rapidly up the stairs in the background as he continued, playfully, “and I was having so much fun with you, too.”

Anakin shouldered his way into his room, his breath pitching heavy and wet from the back of his throat. “Made it,” he said and looked past the spots in his eyes as he crowded into the bathroom. His assigned safe house was painted a baby-vomit yellow that had partially chipped away around the mirror, revealing an indigo blue beneath. He screwed his eyes shut and peeled his bloodstained tunic from his skin.

He’d been a product designer with the GSMO for over two years and the GSMO’s quartermaster nearly another and in that time, he’d seen Jedi through multiple missions, many of whom had almost died, yet he never really got it. Not until now.

They got hurt, obviously. They didn’t always win. Anakin wasn’t a complete idiot. He might’ve been young by the standards of the quartermaster position but he knew the perils of being in the field, the politics, the fear of never coming home. Of course, most agents seemed not to fear anything at all. And when they came back, their wounds already becoming scars, it was like they didn’t even know they were there.

When Anakin chanced to open his eyes, there was nothing but empty space where his right forearm once was. Gone. He stared at where it should have been in the mirror and lurched forward, body aware before he was that he was blacking out.

\---

Anakin swam in and out of consciousness, conversation easing over him and through the force, words that held no meaning-“Shouldn’t be possible”, “Irresponsible risk”, “Wasted in GSMO”, “Unavoidable”, “Held his own against a Sith Lord”-

“Chosen One.”

\---

“What’s really kriffed,” Quinlan said, leaning heavily against the back of an off-white folding chair in Anakin’s sterile hospital room a week later, “is when assignments go as planned, I feel out of my element.”

“Can’t relate.”

Quinlan Vos regarded him skeptically over the rim of his caf, a gleam in his eye, “Can’t you?”

\---

For reasons that don’t bear discussion, but that centered mostly on Anakin’s complete inability to say no to Padme ever, Anakin ended up at Padme’s apartments two months later. It was the night of a gala marking the end of the fiscal year, an event needlessly underscoring the inseparability between bureaucracy and abundance, even in times of war. Padme outfitted him in sunset orange ceremonial robes and a sunburst crown she had pulled from a ratty hatbox in the dark recesses of her second wardrobe. Anakin was in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi, so of course he’d been depressed before, but there was something profoundly harrowing about his best friend painting his chest with gold glitter while his new metal fingers flexed and unflexed at his side, and it made him feel numb down to his toes.

“I look like a high-class escort,” Anakin said from where Padme positioned him in front of her full-length mirror, burnt orange silk sweeping like a molten sunset over the hardened planes of his body. The gold flakes at the corners of his eyes caught the light when he turned his agonized gaze to meet Padme’s in the mirror’s reflection.

“You do,” Padme agreed breezily, “You’re welcome.”

Forty-five minutes later, as the two passed into Monument Plaza, its shops shut down for the gala, Anakin found himself grateful for her administrations. The four, large cone-shaped statues lining the plaza were lit in jewel tones to compliment the glittering, gold lights of Coruscant City beyond. The silver buildings surrounding the Plaza were gilded, illuminating the civilians milling about, each outfit more dazzling and less modest than the last.

Through one of the giant, iridescent bubbles the performers were strumming instruments inside of, Anakin caught sight of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“He’s here,” Anakin barely managed to croak before Padme placed a hand in the crook of his elbow, tugging them both in his direction. Horribly, Obi-Wan was dressed plainly in his customary Jedi tunic, tabards, and pants. Worse still, he looked better than anyone else in attendance.

“Get a hold of yourself,” Padme murmured into his ear at the same time Anakin whined, “He’s going to kill me.”

God, but Anakin _hated_ galas.

Obi-Wan had gone stiff and wide-eyed at their approach, no doubt owing to Padme’s magenta dress all but glowing against her skin. Nothing at all to do with Anakin’s new metal appendage, which was none of Obi-Wan’s business anyway.

“Senator,” Obi-Wan said, recovering smoothly, dipping into a graceful bow and pressing his lips against Padme’s proffered hand. He straightened up and inclined his head in a less formal bow to Anakin, lips pressed into a strained smile, “Quartermaster. Would either of you care for a drink?”

“No thanks, I’ve got to track down the Chancellor before the night is through. There’s an amendment we need to make on the next military spending bill and something tells me I’ll need my wits about me. Anakin?”

Padme liked galas about as much as Anakin, but she was infinitely more sociable and respectable. For example: she was able to hold conversation with her fellow attendees rather than staring.

Standing and staring and saying nothing.

“Excuse him,” Padme said blandly, “Che’s had him on a dangerous cocktail of bacta and painkillers and he still hasn’t recovered. We fear the damage is permanent this time.”

Something akin to recognition flitted across Obi-Wan’s face, “Ah. So you’re where Ahsoka got the drugs.”

“Maybe you should ask your friend Quinlan why I needed them in the first place,” Anakin riposted, immediate.

Before Padme could mutter “and we’re off”, Obi-Wan slid his hand into the crook of Anakin’s elbow and guided them both onto the dance floor. As he towed Anakin through the throng of attendees, Obi-Wan nabbed two flutes of champagne and downed them both.

“Care to dance?” Obi-Wan asked with such ill-concealed irritation that Anakin felt it in the force. It shouldn’t turn him on so much, he recognized that.

Obi-Wan raised one poised, unimpressed eyebrow in response.

Anakin choked, red to the roots of his hair, which Obi-Wan apparently interpreted as a “yes,” clasping Anakin’s prosthetic hand and sweeping him into a waltz. Obi-Wan’s movements were informed by an almost otherworldly grace. His heart in his chest, Anakin matched his steps in earnest, working to anticipate Obi-Wan’s next moves and feeling young and coltish in the process. Whatever Obi-Wan was talking about was barely audible between the music at the event, the crowd of high society talking at each other, and Anakin’s tendency to zoom into Obi-Wan’s rounded, Coruscanti accent rather than what he was actually saying. Anakin did catch “glad you’re here”, whatever that meant; he suppressed the spark of want in his chest.

“Thanks,” Anakin grated out, because it was polite. He took a break in the intricate dance Obi-Wan was leading them through to grab a flute of champagne for himself, because he needed it, and by the time he finished his third, he’d started to feel that good lassitude that visited with good drinks: all his muscles unwinding, the stress melting out of his spine. He grabbed another flute from a passing tray, cheeks pinking under Obi-Wan’s whole-hearted, appraising gaze.

“I’ve missed you,” Obi-Wan said at last, raising Anakin’s hand to press a kiss onto the back of his prosthetic fingers, a phantom warmth echoing up Anakin’s arm.

Obi-Wan was intimidatingly handsome, even if his mullet was something Anakin had come to associate with his less than savory clientele at the Mos Eisely cantina years ago, and Anakin’s breath caught in his throat when Obi-Wan pulled him closer, his broad hand firm and steady on Anakin’s lower back, his beard brushing against Anakin’s neck as he spoke.

“I’ve been gone for over a month so I’m assuming you at least tried to get in contact,” he said and spun Anakin who went willingly, dazedly allowed himself to be reeled back in, “Are you alright, darling?”

Anakin hummed noncommittally, heart hammering at his ribs. In the dark, blue-red-purple light of the dance floor, the music rising and falling around them, Anakin felt very different and distinct from himself.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Obi-Wan asked, raising his glass to his too-casual smile, their eyes locked as he took a long swallow.

Anakin ducked his head to hide how red his face was and made himself take another sip of his own champagne so he wouldn’t watch Obi-Wan’s throat, wouldn’t say anything dumb.

“It was stupid,” he said eventually, the rasp of Obi-Wan’s beard tickling his collar bone, “I kinda...faced off with Darth Tyranus.”

Obi-Wan actually faltered in the waltz, the overly-relaxed set of his face and forced smile evaporating. For a minute, his fingers went lax on Arthur’s back and he looked bowled over, stunned, and said, “Can I take you somewhere more private?”

Recognizing that he sounded unbearably self-deprecating and bitter, Anakin smirked and said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

That actually made Obi-Wan flinch. “Right,” he said, just under his breath, “Maybe I deserved that. I want to talk _,_ Anakin.”

Padme, when they passed by the cocktail tables heading toward the exit, was in a deep conversation with Chancellor Palpatine, eyebrows furrowed to a degree that meant Anakin was probably obligated to intervene, but didn’t. She cast a quick glance his way, unseeing, and Anakin figured it was better than nothing. At least this way there was one witness to him leaving with Obi-Wan when he inevitably ended up dead in a dumpster the next morning.

\---

Anakin kicked off his shoes in the entryway to Obi-Wan’s modest rooms at the Temple, all high ceilings and clean lines, because it's disgusting and wrong to wear shoes inside, but Obi-Wan read in it something else entirely. He helped Anakin out of his overcoat, pinned him slowly against the bed, and took so long to kiss Anakin that the slow press of their bodies together and Obi-Wan’s breath warm against his mouth felt like awe, like asking for confirmation that Anakin was real and there.

“Anakin,” he said, straddling his body and kneeling down on all fours, his warm, muscular limbs fencing Anakin in, the heavy, solid mass of him hovering above, so close, “What happened with Dooku?”

Because it had been a while since he’d been in Obi-Wan’s presence and he apparently went crazy in the time between, Anakin told him the truth, "I ran into him while I was running ground support for Quinlan. He was down for the count so I grabbed his saber and went with it," and reached up to run his palms over Obi-Wan’s robes, stroking the rough-hewn linen, his fingers following the gentle rise and fall of the muscles hidden beneath. He hooked us fingers under their edges and began removing the clothes. He wasn’t sure whether he meant to pull Obi-Wan in or hold him back, spill out his fears and anguish over losing his most valuable appendage as a mech product designer, if he was trying to rush forward or let his reason catch up.

“When he woke up,” Anakin said as the last of Obi-Wan’s clothes fell away, “he distracted Dooku and we ran.”

It's ridiculous that Anakin felt as shy as he did, as new as he did, but maybe that's just because of the way Obi-Wan kissed him then: thorough and unhurried, deeply, reaching one of his battle-hardened hands up to cup Anakin’s face, fingers hot and solid on the side of Anakin’s neck. He kissed him like an apology, like an absolution, like an adoration. Obi-Wan nipped at Anakin’s lower lip, and pressed his tongue in when Anakin gasped at it, his entire body shivering. They’d kissed before, but not like this, and Obi-Wan’s touched him before, but not like this, either: like every movement meant something, guiding his sunset orange robes off his shoulder and down his body, onto the floor of the bedroom Anakin had seen countless times before, the distant lights of Coruscant slanted warmly across the room.

“Oh _darling._ Darling, you _lived_ ,” Obi-Wan said as if that made any type of sense, his voice thick with some unspoken emotion, and Anakin couldn’t resist.

“Well, what else did you expect me to do?”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, his name a benediction, “shut _up_.” He sat back on his haunches and wrapped his hands around Anakin’s wrists. “Can’t you believe that I love you?” his voice turned vulnerable as he tugged Anakin’s wrists over his head, pressed them into the soft mattress, “even after all this time?”

Anakin couldn’t help it, it was pure reflex to move against the hold, tighten his muscles to test it. Obi-Wan’s grip was like a vice, any effort Anakin made to pull free ridiculously futile against his strength.

An unbreakable restraint.

Safe.

He felt himself go pliant, yielding, even as his hips arced upward, his cock throbbing with need for friction, for touch. He said tauntingly, “Is this a necessary use of the force?”

“You like it,” Obi-Wan said. Anakin felt like he was swimming in honey, champagne in his veins and zinging through the chambers of his heart instead of blood. There was a coal burning in his stomach even though his skin's prickled with the coolness of the room, and he was scared and excited, when Obi-Wan briefly lowered himself atop Anakin and kissed him on the side of his neck, wailing when he got teeth and a bruising suck as a reward.

“I’d like it even more if you touched me.”

In spite of the warning noise Obi-Wan made, he pulled Anakin’s wrists together, close enough to hold with one hand, and reached down to trail over Anakin’s belly, a light scratch of calloused fingertips that sent shivers of anticipation through his nerves. Then Obi-Wan’s touch dipped lower, laying his hand on the bare curve of his hip, palm hard against hip bone, fingers dug into the flesh of his ass. The grip held him down just as firmly as the hand around his wrists, his body drawn taut between the two anchor points, each shaky breath he took stretching his sinews and muscles against their weight. He was aware of every cell of his body.

Then his cock was encased in Obi-Wan’s sure grasp, Anakin growing harder at the sight, swelling and thickening inside Obi-Wan’s grip, fluid leaking from him hot and slippery.

He let his head to fall back on the bed, and Obi-Wan pressed his hands down further against the mattress, reasserting his hold. His hand started moving on his cock. Slowly, up and down, maintaining the same exact level of pressure, a steady, reassuring motion. There was a rightness to it that took Anakin by surprise, that was entirely expected. He turned his neck, seeking contact, pressed his face into Obi-Wan’s forearm stretched above his head to hold him in place. His body was shaking with pleasure and he breathed it out in ragged breaths against the clean warmth of Obi-Wan, in open-mouthed kisses that filled his palate with the mild, familiar taste of Obi-Wan’s skin.

“Do you know how incredible you are?” Obi-Wan asked, and his voice was in Anakin’s ear, his head bent so low his forehead brushed the hair at his temple; the space between them closing, a gravitational pull.

Anakin’s response was more a moan than a spoken word, but Obi-Wan rewarded him regardless. His hand picked up the pace, rubbing Anakin’s cock with quicker strokes, firm, insistent. It felt like everything Obi-Wan had never had the courage to say, everything Anakin couldn’t bring himself to bring up. It felt so good, what Obi-Wan was doing, the nearness of him, the way his firm body was everywhere around him, above him, filled his senses, blocked the rest of the galaxy from view. There was nothing there but the two of them, and the pleasure building at the base of Anakin’s spine, tightening his balls. There was nothing else that mattered.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, and it was that familiar directness again, the perfect openness that left him panting, after all his years carrying his want in secret, paying for it in bitterness and regret, “I _love_ you, you know that?”

It yanked a breathless laugh from Anakin, the idea that at this point he could not. Or perhaps it was joy, bubbling out of him, that Obi-Wan loved him, wanted him, wanted them together. Either way, he didn’t have a chance to reply before Obi-Wan had begun jerking him faster still, pace leaving no room for doubt, an inaudible chord traveling through every nerve-ending, reaching into the marrow of his bones, deeper than all his layers of deflection and deceit, beneath any defenses. He came helplessly, artlessly, arching up from Obi-Wan’s grip, arching into him, and Obi-Wan held him there, held him fast in the moment, and all he could do was be.

\---

“I think it’s time we talked,” Obi-Wan said, collapsed next to him on bed. Anakin disagreed, couldn’t think of a worse time to have the conversation he’d been avoiding for literal years while naked in a post-coital glow not two months after his kriffing hand had been chopped off.

But Anakin’d never _not_ done something just because it was painful, ill advised, or otherwise bad for his physical or emotional well-being.

“Oh?” Anakin said loftily, "Is now really the best time?"

"Decision’s yours," Obi-Wan leveraged himself on his elbow to face Anakin directly, "But it's about how I'm in love with you, if that helps in making your choice at all."

When he finally spoke, Anakin realized with no small degree of dismay that his mouth was already agape, “I'm sorry, you're _what_?" 

"I'm in love with you," Obi-Wan repeated, as though it was a statement of fact. The sky was blue, Tatooine had two suns, and Obi-Wan Kenobi loved Anakin Skywalker. As though it was the easiest thing in the world to say. Simple. "I'm in love with you, I've been in love with you for years, and there's no point in pretending like I don't anymore."

Anakin’s lips parted. “I—Obi-Wan.”

“Obviously, if you don't feel the same way, nothing has to change,” Obi-Wan said with a cavalier shrug that Anakin saw right through, “I just thought you should know.”

Anakin waited, in the dreamlike quiet of the bedroom, to wake up. The temperature control formed the baseline of his disbelief, the faint comings and goings of traffic outside the window their percussion, until he felt like his entire life had gone by with him laying in the half-dark of Obi-Wan’s room and Obi-Wan’s entire body pressed up against his where they laid side by side. Anakin could feel adrenaline and what he could only suspect was hope running up against each other at his temples.

“So, you’re telling me,” Anakin said slowly, “that for the past couple of years, give or take, I’ve been in love with you, and you’ve been in love with me, and we’ve both just been...what? hoping that it doesn’t come up?”

At Obi-Wan’s pained expression, Anakin lost it. He fell back to the bed and couldn’t keep himself from laughing, hands coming up to block his face. He felt the bed shift as Obi-Wan leaned over him and Anakin peaked out at him through his fingers, saw his skeptical expression, and manically pulled him into an abrupt kiss around peals of laughter.

“What’s funny?” Obi-Wan asked after their lips parted. Anakin could sense his concern rapidly deteriorating into amusement or low grade annoyance or some well-mixed combination of both that he'd perfected as Anakin’s best friend.

“It’s nothing,” Anakin managed between gasps, incapable of catching his breath, “It’s just that you hang out with my _mom_ -” then he was off again, laughing hard enough that the bed shook as countless other things--how Obi-Wan sought him out first after his missions, the holocalls, their ever entangled force signatures--came to mind, “Obi-Wan Kenobi, I’ve never felt so stupid and so happy at the same time.”

Obi-Wan pinned him with a firm hand on his shoulder and Anakin could see him taking in his open glee with wonder. His mouth quirked up at one corner. In return, Anakin could feel his own grin growing bigger and dumber with every passing second.

“I love you,” he said again, affirming it.

Anakin rolled over onto Obi-Wan, who immediately moved to accommodate his weight, holding him close like it was what he was born to do.

Anakin felt an impossible swell in his chest, “I love you, too.”

“Does this mean you’ll stop putting yourself directly in harm’s way?” 

And the truth is, any number of things could have sent Anakin’s life on a completely different trajectory, for better or worse, but it wouldn’t have been worth it because it wouldn’t have lead him here. He brought Obi-Wan’s face up to his and kissed him and kissed him again, his hands viciously tight, gripping like he’d never let go, “Not a chance.”

**Author's Note:**

> -Read however ya like, but in my head I shortened the age gap between Obi-Wan and Anakin to:  
> a.) Ensure Obi-Wan had The Mullet  
> b.) Refer to a.)
> 
> -I know I've taken a lot of liberties but so do the folks that craft canon so that's that on that
> 
> -Something tells me that, as soon as I have the time, I'll be returning to this verse for more podracing, spy intrigue, and so forth. Hence the Series designation.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @ [ mercy-me ](https://mercy-me.tumblr.com/) so that we can scream together


End file.
